WhatsApp's payments entity may rope in former Paytm executive

WhatsApp considers India as its largest market, with a monthly active user base of over 200 million, as of February 2018.

BENGALURU: Facebook-owned WhatsApp is finalising its India leadership team, even as its payments business finds itself in a regulatory limbo. According to multiple industry sources aware of the development, former Paytm vice-president Amit Lakhotia is set to become the head of its payments entity in India.

Former India head of Amazon’s financial services, Sriraman Jagannathan, was also in the fray with WhatsApp interviewing him. However, ET has learnt that Jagannathan chose in favour of doing something else.

ET has learnt that multiple WhatsApp executives, including its chief executive officer Chris Daniels, have met and interviewed the candidates during recent visits to India.

In an emailed response to ET’s questions, a WhatsApp official said: “We do not comment on our hiring process, and we have not named anyone for these roles.” When contacted by ET, Lakhotia, who has returned to India following a two-and-a-half-year stint as vice-president of business at Indonesian ecommerce company Tokopedia, declined to comment. Jagannathan too declined to comment when asked about him being interviewed for the WhatsApp role.

Neeraj Arora, WhatsApp business head and one of its early employees, was recently in India to finalise hires, his last major assignment before he quits the company to start his fund in the US, said one of the sources mentioned above. While WhatsApp did not comment on his exit, Arora is currently said to be on paternity leave.

WhatsApp currently has one corporate entity in India, by the name of WhatsApp Application Services Limited, and is registered in Hyderabad with Rakesh Rewari, formerly with Small Industries Development Bank of India, and its general counsel Anne Hoge Milken, as the entity’s directors.

ET reported in July that the company hired its first official in India-—Pragya Misra Mehrishi—responsible for communications and policy. WhatsApp considers India as its largest market, with a monthly active user base of over 200 million, as of February 2018.

Since WhatsApp is entering the payments space as a third party payment service provider in partnership with banks offering Unified Payments Interface-based payments, there are no regulatory requirements to set up a separate payments entity within India. However, Google has set up a separate division under Google Pay and has hired key functionaries in top executive roles to drive their payments strategy in India. On the other hand, Amazon operates payments as a RBI-registered Prepaid Payments Instrument licence holder which required it to set up a separate payments entity here.

“This could be WhatsApp’s attempt at showing to the country and the government that they are serious about their India business and that payments as an entity will be kept separate from Facebook,” said a senior banker in the know of the matter.

WhatsApp’s foray into payments in India has been a trial by fire for the Facebook-owned messaging company. ET reported on September 9 that WhatsApp’s plans to expand majorly into payments have hit two major hurdles, one data localisation, and second is its travails around unchecked spreading of fake news and the spate of lynchings that followed. While it had launched a pilot of its payment product in February in partnership with ICICI Bank it has been more than six months and is yet to launch it fully.

During a previous interaction with ET, its chief operating officer Matthew Idema had said that not only was WhatsApp planning to hire a leadership team in India but was also keen on working with the Indian government on data localisation guidelines. With these key hirings, WhatsApp could be looking at taking the first decisive step towards setting up its India operations.

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